1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to musical instrument strings and more particularly, to an improvement in wound strings of the type used on base guitars and the like.
2. Background of the Invention
Base strings for the various types of guitars require a larger mass than the higher note strings and have long been manufactured by helically winding one or more coils of relatively light gauge wire about a center wire in order to provide a string which is flexible enough to provide clear, crisp ringing sounds.
One of the problems with such strings, however, is that the helical grooves formed between each turn of the outer winding generate noise as the player's fingers slide along the string and cause excessive fret and neck wear as the string surface is pressed into engagement therewith.
An attempt to overcome this problem has been to either grind the surface of the outer winding to produce a "ground round wound" string. Another solution has been to utilize a wire having a rectangular cross section as the outer winding of the string to provide what is known as a "flat wound" string.
Although these solutions offer definite improvements over the round wound configuration, grinding of the entire length of wire reduces the ability of the string to accurately reproduce high notes within its range and using the flat wound configuration substantially increases the cost of the string.